by Andrew Rose
Major Bald died in 1938, leaving the bulk of his estate to his sister, Mrs Algernon Hay. Characteristically, he made generous provision for the staff at East Haugh, arranged a large bequest to help disabled soldiers, and left £250 to ‘Musgrave Castle Smith’, an old Eton friend and fellow army officer, ‘in appreciation of his sterling qualities’. In the late summer of 1923, Major Ernest Bald had given ample proof of his own sterling qualities as an officer and a gentleman.
17
The Real Deal
The Prison Commissioners sought information from the Metropolitan Police about the proposed teacher of English. ‘Mrs Barton appears to have been employed at Scotland Yard’, wrote the Secretary of the Prison Commissioners, presumably on the basis of information provided by Major Bald, ‘Can you say if she is a reliable person please.’
No trace of Mrs Barton was found in criminal records. An approach was then made by Scotland Yard staff to Special Branch, whose report had been shown to Superintendent Parker, in overall charge of the murder enquiry, within two days of the shooting.
Norman Kendal, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, dealt with the request. Kendal, then aged 43, was already a high flyer at Scotland Yard. Educated (like Lord Stamfordham) at Rossall School, a minor public school in the north of England, and Oriel College, Oxford, he practised as a barrister before war service, in which he was severely injured.353 Kendal’s endorsement to the police file reveals that a ‘Miss Baker’ had come into the frame, probably because her name had been given as a character reference. ‘Miss Baker’, minuted Kendal firmly, ‘is highly respectable & unless you have something agst her I propose to say that we have nothing agst Mrs Barton’. On 20 August, Kendal wrote to the Prison Commissioners, informing them that ‘We have no objection to Mrs Barton and know nothing of her’, adding a highly significant endorsement, which forges another link in the chain of circumstance surrounding the agreement to protect the name of the Prince. ‘Colonel Thompson of the N.V.A.,’ wrote Kendal, ‘tells me that she is an old subscriber and quite respectable.’
The NVA, the ‘National Vigilance Association’, was founded in 1885, at the prompting of several earnest social reformers, including the campaigning journalist W. T. Stead and the Victorian feminist Josephine Butler. Its aim was ‘the enforcement and improvement of the laws for the repression of criminal vice and public morality’. Shocked by the extent of prostitution, often involving very young girls, and by the Contagious Diseases Act of 1869, which authorised the humiliating medical examination of women merely suspected of prostitution, the NVA successfully pressed for legislative change. The Criminal Law Amendment Act of that year reformed the law on female prostitution. Unfortunately, thanks to the ‘Labouchère Amendment’, tagged on to the original Bill, all adult male homosexual behaviour was criminalised, ‘in public or in private’, creating a notorious ‘Blackmailers’ Charter’, which endured until the reform of 1967.354
Like many well-intentioned attempts at changing the human condition, the NVA was not content to campaign on its original remit of helping women in the ‘unfortunate class’. From the 1900s, the association began to attack what it perceived to be ‘pornography’, a widely defined category which included the novels of Émile Zola, duly banned by the Home Secretary in 1906.
By 1923, Miss Annie Baker (the referee noted by Norman Kendal in his Special Branch memorandum) was Secretary and Director of the NVA, with Colonel Thompson as her assistant. Col Thompson was editor of the portentous Manual of Vigilance Law (4th edition) and Miss Baker, already a formidable campaigner, had written a book modestly entitled A Romance of Philanthropy: Being a Record of the Principal Incidents Connected with the Exceptionally Successful Thirty Years’ Work of the National Vigilance Association.
The NVA had forged strong links with other self-important bodies, such as ‘The Association for Social and Moral Hygiene’ and ‘The London Council for the Promotion of Public Morality’, whose efforts to suppress misbehaviour in London’s parks and open spaces has already been noted. In 1923, the NVA and LCPPM jointly lobbied the Home Office for action against ‘objectionable books and press reports’.
There was, however, a distinctly sinister side to this phalanx of do-gooders. W. J. H. Brodrick, a London magistrate, who was chairman of the NVA in 1923, made his trenchant views known to yet another moralising lobby, ‘The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene’. Young male prostitutes were, according to Mr Brodrick, ‘usually diseased … a pest and a nuisance … I should be glad to see them put in a lethal chamber…’355 Although some of the work of these organisations may have been prompted by noble aims, there is more than a whiff of self-righteousness in the activities of these ‘prudes on the prowl’, a mordant description of the genre given by young Winston Churchill in the 1890s.356
In its campaigns in the early years of the century, the NVA had benefited from the legal advice of Archibald Bodkin, who closely identified himself with the NVA’s work. Bodkin was a member of the NVA, becoming its ‘standing counsel’ and eventually sat on the board of management.357
Bodkin, with a family background in law, was born in 1862. After putting him through Highgate School, his barrister father had insufficient funds to send Bodkin to university (which might have broadened his social outlook). Instead he went straight into the law, where his practice, apart from some liquor licensing work, consisted almost entirely of criminal briefs in which Bodkin almost invariably appeared for the prosecution. ‘By upbringing he was a rigid Victorian … a vigorous prosecutor with a high success rate,’ widely regarded as ‘tough and unfeeling’.358
Bodkin materially advanced his legal career in the Great War, while Treasury Counsel (senior prosecutor at the Old Bailey), for his work in spy cases, mostly involving German nationals, but occasionally French-speaking Belgian defendants. At this time, Bodkin needed reliable interpreters, most of whom (given the absence of men at the front) were women.
Appointed Director of Public Prosecutions in July 1920, Bodkin would no longer have been able to work directly with the NVA. With the knowledge we have of his methods,359 it is clear that Bodkin took a close interest in the Savoy shooting from the outset, with access to the growing police file, including Special Branch papers on Marguerite. Although he would not have countenanced her way of life, Bodkin would take Marguerite’s side against a husband depicted by her as a monster of oriental depravity. In her prosecutor, Marguerite had found a true friend, whose influence in the trial process was enormous, extending from the earliest stages of a criminal enquiry to the trial itself, including a very close relationship with judges, far closer than would be considered desirable today. A deeply conservative figure, Bodkin would have agreed with Godfrey Thomas and Stamfordham, ‘the Impeccable’, that the Prince’s name must not be drawn into the trial process at any cost.
Mrs Barton, that ‘old subscriber’ to the NVA and ‘teacher of languages’ links Bald to Bodkin. Bald also links Bodkin to the Royal Household. Given what we know of the world of Ernest Bald – a huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’ cavalry officer with an eye for wicked ladies – it is virtually inconceivable that the major could have come up with this odd choice of ‘teacher’ all by himself.
In the absence of Major Bald and during the three weeks before the trial started on 10 September, it was in the interests of the Royal Household and the DPP that an independent channel of communication should be maintained beyond that which existed between Marguerite and her lawyers. A call from York House to the DPP’s offices at Richmond Terrace, or a talk over lunch in a gentleman’s club, may have secured the services of Mrs Barton, an eminently respectable rabbit plucked from Sir Archibald Bodkin’s black silk hat.
Marguerite, the decidedly unreformed ‘pupil’, hardly fitted the expectations of the NVA. As one of the best-known and top-ranking courtesans in Paris, she lived a world away from the front-parlour moralising of Baker, Barker and Bodkin. Nevertheless, Mrs Barton was clearly a fluent French speaker and her connect
ion with the work of the NVA must have given her a few conversational gambits. In her world far away from High Society, lairds, field sports, galloping majors and Scottish lochs, Mrs Barton seems to have served as a trusted interpreter discreetly selected by the DPP. Though she presumably reported back to Bodkin, there may not have been very much to worry about. Agreement about the letters had been reached and Marguerite, though her moral character was not of the highest, stuck to the bargain and would keep her silence about links with the Prince.
Put simply, the choice of Mrs Barton bears all Bodkin’s fingerprints. Her selection ostensibly by Major Bald seems to have been a deliberate tactic to distance Bodkin, the prosecutor, from appearing to have direct contact with Marguerite.
One disparity remains unsolved. Mrs Barton had, according to information supplied by Major Bald, ‘apparently been employed at Scotland Yard’, but Norman Kendal, a senior officer in Special Branch, had stated firmly ‘we … know nothing of her’ in answer to the question put by the Prison Commissioners. The exchange is recorded in the general police file on Marguerite, which would have been available to relatively junior officers attached to the investigation. If Kendal was trying to put others off the scent, it may be because Mrs Barton had previously played some role in sensitive Special Branch work involving Bodkin, either as a senior prosecutor or, since 1920, as DPP.
Whatever she was doing there, it is clear that Mrs Barton did not go to Holloway Prison to be a teacher of English. In Marguerite’s own words, ‘I have always regretted not having learned English. Never has my regret been keener than during my sad detention and trial.’360 Marguerite described in some detail her period of remand in Holloway and mentioned the visits of Major Bald, but made no reference to Mrs Barton, to a teacher, or to any intensive course in the English language.361
Other elements of the deal between the Royal Household and Marguerite also involved Bodkin’s participation. As has been noted earlier in this chapter, Bodkin took a lively interest in the progress of the police investigation. He almost invariably considered each case personally and would visit crime scenes, with a view to telling his staff how to conduct the prosecution case.362 Although Bodkin had to respect the demarcation line between his department and the Metropolitan Police in the conduct of the criminal enquiry, in tandem with the sloppy detective work, Bodkin was carefully selecting prosecution witnesses for the inquest and in committal proceedings at Bow Street Police Court. His list of expert witnesses, as we shall see, omitted the name of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the forensic pathologist whose testimony could materially have strengthened the case for the prosecution. Other important witnesses were also overlooked.363
Even for his time, Bodkin was extremely prudish, disliked saucy seaside postcards and relished the prosecution of their publishers. More seriously, ‘his contempt for lewd books was unbounded’. In 1922, he banned James Joyce’s Ulysses from sale in England and, five years later, was instrumental in the prosecution of Radclyffe Hall for her celebrated novel The Well of Loneliness, which to modern eyes seems a very decorous, even dull, salute to lesbian love.
The office of Director of Public Prosecutions, founded in 1879, had grown in importance during the early years of the twentieth century. As an example, though the selection of trial judge ought not to be influenced by the prosecutor’s wishes, a senior member of the then DPP’s staff wrote a revealing letter to the then DPP, Sir Charles ‘Willie’ Mathews, shortly before the internationally famous trial of Dr Crippen in October 1910 for the murder of his wife, Belle Elmore. ‘This is one of the criminal trials that … the L[ord] C[hief] J[ustice] ought always to try … he [the judge] told me if you thought so too he would take it…’364
The selection of High Court judge for the September session at the Central Criminal Court was nominally a matter for the court administration, headed by the ‘Clerk of Arraigns’. Rigby Swift, then aged 49, had been appointed a High Court judge three years earlier by the almost equally youthful Lord Chancellor Birkenhead, formerly Sir F. E. Smith KC. Both men had deep roots in the Liverpool area and both were enthusiastic Tories. Swift had sat as Unionist [Conservative] MP for St Helens for eight years until 1918 (present-day appointees are usually more discreet about their politics). Intellectually, however, the two men were poles apart.
F. E. Smith had enjoyed meteoric success after taking First Class Honours in Jurisprudence at Oxford and was the youngest Lord Chancellor to be appointed in modern times. Rigby Swift, two years his junior, was never an Oxbridge man, practising in Liverpool for a decade and a half before testing the water in London. ‘Wherever I am,’ he once declared proudly, ‘can be summed up in one word – Liverpool.’365
The eighth child of a solicitor (his mother’s maiden name was Daft), Swift’s practice was nurtured by local legal connections and his bluff, no-nonsense manner brought him a great deal of work. Legal biographies and obituaries tend to the hagiographic, but – reading between the respectful lines – it seems that Swift’s chubby features and ruddy complexion were due to a fondness for drink, a failing not exactly unknown in the legal profession. One of Swift’s ‘marshals’, young barristers who learned on the job by accompanying a judge on Circuit, remembered how Swift would begin the judicial day with a stiff whisky or two at breakfast time.366
Swift’s unashamedly provincial manner was exemplified by ‘a deliberate Lancashire drawl’, which caused him to be known in the courts, half-humorously, as ‘Rigbah’. He considered himself, with some justification, to be a ‘plain man’, believing in ‘the wholesome deterrent of flogging’. A keen churchman, Swift was a churchwarden and possessed all the in-built puritanism of the English middle class. He preffered the bible to any other book. Swift’s description of himself, as ‘an early Victorian’, could have been shared by Sir Archibald Bodkin.367
This recently appointed, narrow-minded, socially malleable and manifestly provincial judge was an easy target for the DPP. The campaign to keep the Prince’s reputation unbesmirched by scandal would have an invaluable ally. Though the task of recovering the love letters had been a tricky and long drawn-out affair, only completed in late August, persuading the judge to prohibit revelations about Marguerite’s true character was not likely to have been a serious problem. In the privacy of the judge’s room, Bodkin might say to Swift, ‘Of course, judge, there’s no question of fettering your judicial discretion or in any way suggesting that you should take a particular course of action, but there is something very important I think you ought to know…’ A discreet reference to the involvement of royalty was probably all that was needed to persuade Swift to agree an embargo on any revelations about Marguerite’s past life before she met Ali Fahmy in 1922 which, in the circumstances of the case, would be a powerful factor in securing acquittal.
The legal process had to bear the external appearance of a normal murder trial. It is impossible to know how far knowledge of the Prince’s affair with Marguerite had filtered, but the paucity of references in contemporary British diaries and correspondence, coupled with the complete absence of any mention in the British press, suggests that very few knew about the liaison and that even fewer were aware of the love letters and their potential danger. These would be secrets well kept.
For the Crown, Bodkin selected an experienced team of barristers, known as ‘Treasury Counsel’. Percival Clarke, son of the great Victorian advocate, Sir Edward Clarke, led for the prosecution, assisted by Eustace Fulton, also from a distinguished legal family. Clarke certainly went through the motions, but the application made under the Criminal Evidence Act to explore Marguerite’s character was feeble, a half-hearted exercise, as if Clarke knew in advance that the judge would not allow any examination of Marguerite’s background and meeting Ali in 1922.
The lodging of documents and the giving of unsolicited advice to the DPP from the Fahmy family and lawyers was understandable, because Bodkin was directing the prosecution of a woman charged with murdering their young relative. Much more unusual is the presence in the DP
P’s file of copy correspondence and statements from Marguerite’s solicitor, Freke Palmer. At that time, the defence was not obliged to reveal its hand in advance. Witness statements and accompanying documentation could be kept back, to be produced during the trial, often with a useful element of surprise when it was too late for adequate response by the prosecution. In this case, however, copy letters from Freke Palmer, with statements of witnesses deposing to various matters connected with her defence, were lodged with the DPP. Although Freke Palmer may not have been privy to negotiations about the letters and Marguerite’s silence, he clearly knew that something was in the wind and that it was safe to supply information to the Crown.368
This was to be a Show Trial with a difference. The authorities wanted Marguerite to be acquitted. A murder conviction would – quite simply – have been catastrophic for the Crown.
18
The Prince over the Water
Like a child at play, blissfully unaware of some looming family crisis, the Prince of Wales spent the latter part of that summer largely untroubled by the danger which so deeply worried his closest advisers. In denial (not for the first or the last time) about unpleasant matters, the Prince carried on just as before. He was content to leave the hard graft of bolstering his reputation as Prince Charming in the capable hands of his two secretaries.
At the date of his appointment as Assistant Secretary, in November 1920, Tommy Lascelles was utterly smitten by the charming Prince. Before long, however, the Prince’s often wayward, unpredictable and essentially selfish nature caused Lascelles to revise his view. His royal master was becoming hard work. Two years after Tommy’s appointment, the Prince paid a backhanded compliment to his backroom boys, telling them how he was getting ‘a pretty good insight of all the drudgery & toiling that you & Godfrey [Thomas] do for me’.369